Performance Study of Cultural Algorithms Based on Genetic Algorithm with Single and Multi Population for the MKP

Evolutionary Computation (EC) is inspired from by evolution that explores the solution space by gene inheritance, mutation, and selection of the fittest candidate solutions. Since their inception in the 1960s, Evolutionary Computation has been used in various hard and complex optimization problems in search and optimization such as: combinatorial optimization, functions optimization with and without constraints, engineering problems and others (Adeyemo, 2011). This success is in part due to the unbiased nature of their operations, which can still perform well in situations with little or no domain knowledge (Reynolds, 1999). The basic EC framework consists of fairly simple steps like definition of encoding scheme, population generation method, objective function, selection strategy, crossover and mutation (Ahmed & Younas, 2011). In addition, the same procedures utilized by EC can be applied to diverse problems with relatively little reprogramming.